


The Ways We Cope

by RyMagnatar



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, F/M, Happy New Years!, M/M, New Years party, Sadstuck, Smut, Who Knows?, blah blah sad karkat, eridan gets the d, humans and trolls, lifespan issues, maybe there wasnt, maybe theres a game, secretively sadstuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-02
Updated: 2013-01-02
Packaged: 2017-11-23 07:39:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/619681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RyMagnatar/pseuds/RyMagnatar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into the lives of several couples (and a one-sided romance) in the wake of Karkat's ominous words. When there isn't much time, you don't have any you can waste on indecisiveness or sorrow. You have to make every moment count.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ways We Cope

The house is full to the brim of partygoers. It’s hot, even with the windows wide open, and bright and noisome. The Time’s Square video has been on for the past hour, people watching it periodically. The ball isn’t going to drop for another hour, but half the people there are already drunk.

You can tell something is off with your girlfriend after she has a discussion with Karkat of all people. When he walks away from her, she turns to you and her blue eyes are wide with…fear? Now you firmly believe that a dose of fear is good for any healthy person to have, but certainly not at a party, and certainly not when you are more than a little tipsy.

She comes over to you and kisses you firmly on the lips, right there in the middle of the room. Someone laughs and says that the ball hasn’t dropped yet, but she ignores them with surprising control. Her focus is all on you. You smile to her, feeling a little lightheaded and  woozy over the kiss and the drink in your hand. “What is it?”

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, Rose,” She says with that voice that means she’s determined to see her plans out. You arch your eyebrow, because you don’t remember coming up with any shenanigans with her for tonight. “And I think it’s time that I do right by you.”

You blink in surprise as she goes down to one knee. Suddenly the room is entirely focused on you and Vriska and she’s holding your left hand and her mouth is moving but you don’t hear any words. She pulls a box out of her pocket and you just about faint when you see the size of the rock on that ring. The black metal and the shining diamond is what makes Meenah catcall from the other side of the room.

All of a sudden you realize that everyone is looking at you, and Vriska has stopped talking. They’re waiting for a reply. You feel so young, though, like you really aren’t twenty six at all. You feel seventeen with butterflies in your stomach and it’s the first time you’ve had any alcohol at a party. That was her fault, all those years ago.

So you drain the cup in your hand, throw it over your shoulder and declare, “Vriska Serket, it is about damn time that you do right by me you bitch.”

She laughs and puts that beautiful ring on your finger.

You kiss her like the world is ending.

* * *

 

“John?”

Whenever your ex-crush and your current boyfriend talk, you always get nervous. You reach out your hand to his arm and touch it, hesitantly. “What’s wrong?”

He shakes his head, “It’s nothing, Nepeta.” He pushes up his glasses to wipe his eyes. Those are tears on his cheeks, and you can see the moisture on his eyelashes. You step closer and lean in, kissing him gently on the cheek.

“You can tell me what it is, you know. It’s all right.”

You came in to tell him that Vriska had proposed to Rose, right in front of everyone. You know he would want to congratulate his friends heartily. You didn’t expect to find him in the corner of the kitchen, crying and trying to hide it.

He shakes his head again and puts his arm around your waist. He kisses you on the lips, soft and gentle. He was always so remarkably tender to you, even when he could be a right asshole to others. You loved that about him. “Can you make a New Years resolution with me?”

“Um, sure?”

“Let’s resolve to make the very best out of our time together, for this year, or for the rest of our lives, however long it is that we are together. I want us to promise to have the best time together.”

You grin broadly, “Of course! Did you plan anything different?”

He laughs and kisses you lightly, “No. But I feel better declaring it like this. So you promise?”

“I promise.”

* * *

 

“Any other day,” you mutter to yourself, shoving your hand into your pockets, “any other day at all…” You weren’t feeling yourself, you really weren’t. You had been so excited for this party and yet, now, after that little asshole came talking to you, mumbling like he was drunk and frowning like he was constipated—

Well, no one could affect your mood like a Vantas, for better or worse.

So you drink from your stupid red plastic cup and you watch him, the other Vantas, _your_ Vantas, enter a discussion with someone you don’t really recognize. He’s gotten better about not flat out ranting, over the last few years. He’s also gotten taller. He looks like an adult now, instead of a kid in a too long sweater.

He looks far more grown up than those around him, even though they were all the same age. You look away, ashamed, guilty, angry, but you can’t keep your eyes off him long.

You should do something. You should say something. You’ve been pining too long. You’ve been sleeping around too long.

Then he looks up from his conversation and sees you watching him. He offers you a small smile, impersonal, polite. It’s the same smile he’s given you in greeting for years. You smile back. Porrim touches his arm and draws his attention away again, though.

So you just lurk where you are, drinking yourself into a stupor. Any other day and you would walk over, get in his business, push your luck, push at him, push at the whole world.

Any other day, you would try.

But this wasn’t any other day. It was the end of one year and the beginning of another, and that made all the damn difference in the world.

* * *

“Remember?” He says in your ear, his voice like silk, “Remember when we met? It was this night, years ago.”

“Four,” You murmur back, your mouth over his, “Four years exactly.”

He grins at you, shimmying out of his shirt. It catches on his horns but he manages to get it off quickly. “Always can count on you to know the time. Speakin’ a which. How much until the new year?”

“Fifteen minutes.” Now your mouth is over his nipple, your teeth biting at his grey skin. Your fingers run down his ribs, over the scars of his grublegs and to his hips. You work on his pants, tugging them down. “Now fourteen,” you murmur, looking up.

“You’re not goin’ to count down the whole fifteen minutes, are you?”

You smirk at him. He heaves a great sigh and pulls your head up. He kisses you until you’re dizzy. When you pull back from the kiss, you’re on your back and he’s straddling your hips. He’s lost his pants somewhere. His bulge is only partly out, but you can’t wait. There isn’t enough time to wait.

“Ah, Dave,” he moans out your name as you slide your hand down between his thighs and you rub his nook.

He grinds down against you and kisses you again. The next time you come up for air, your pants are down and your cock is being slicked up by his bulge. There’s nothing like the feeling of his nearly prehensile tenta-dick wrapping, squeezing, rubbing against your own very human junk. “Nine,” you huff out against his earfin.

He nips at your lips in reply, and down your neck. “You think you can make me cum in nine minutes?”

You grin. You show your teeth in that way that he does; showing more teeth than mirth. It makes him shiver in your arms.

You roll the two of you again, pinning him to the bed. You get your cock from his bulge and you push it into his nook. He groans, arches into you, rolls his hips against you.

You throw yourself into fucking him like you never have before. His voice rises from muttered curses, to moans to loud shouting as you drive yourself into him again and again. You know what angle to use to turn him into a screaming, pleasured mass of grey limbs and purple pre-cum. You drag your fingernails down his chest, over the tattoos of records and clocks and gears he got on his left breast and over some of his ribs, and down to his hips. He’s been so into you for fucking years now. You thought it was nice, having a boyfriend, going out and seeing him and then being able to go home and do your own thing.

But that time is over now.

You lean in, cock buried to the base, and you kiss his moan filled mouth. His claws have dragged cuts over your shoulders, you can feel the sting of open air on the scratches. You suck his tongue into your mouth and grind your hips against him, working your dick around in his nook.

He arches, clenches around you. He screams, forgetting how to kiss. You feel his climax run through him harder than before. Or perhaps you’re seeing it through your own desperation. You ride him through his orgasm, and just as he lets out his last moan, you bite your lip and cum.

There are tears in your eyes when you finally pull out, physically satiated.

You lay down next to him on the bed that isn’t his or yours and you heave out a heavy sigh. Eridan curls himself into your arms, his cheek against your shoulder, his temple against your jaw. You feel the flutter of his fins on your skin. You run your fingers through his hair and then whisper, “Move in with me.”

He smiles against your neck. He kisses the skin there. “No.”

You pull your head back and frown. He looks up at you with the most smug, pleased little face, “You move in with me.”

You’ve never really thought of living away from Bro, but when Eridan suggests it, you know what you have to say.

“Yes, sir.”

He smirks and kisses you.

* * *

 

You find him sitting on the roof, beer in one hand, wedged into a corner and watching the fireworks go off. You get out there the same way he does, climbing through the window of Kanaya’s workroom and pulling yourself up and out onto the roof.

He gives you a brief nod before looking back to the fireworks. You think the fact that he’s wearing sunglasses outside in the dark is stupid. But then you think pretty much everything he does is stupid, from showing up at parties where he’s got a good decade of age on everyone else and he’s wearing his part santa hat, part normal baseball cap, all annoying thing. He’s nearly forty. You think he should act like it.

Whenever you say so, he tells you he is, and how would you know what forty is like anyway?

You try to explain your mutation, and how that’s fucked with your lifespan, but he just tells you it’s bullshit that doesn’t matter. So you end up on the roof, looking at him while he looks at the fireworks, until you decide you hate him more than you hate yourself so you’ll do something you like.

You walk carefully across the roof and nudge his leg with your foot. He shifts his sitting position, opening his legs to give you somewhere to sit. The roof is gritty against your ass and you regret wearing such thin pants outside. He puts one arm around your middle, the other stretched out, balanced on a knee, where he holds his drink.

Your head fits perfectly under his chin. You turn away from the fireworks, in towards him as close as you can. “Feel any better?” he says. You can feel the vibration of his words in his chest. It tickles. You wrinkle your nose and curl up tighter.

“I don’t think I changed anything,” you keep your voice quiet, “I don’t think they took me seriously.”

He shifts his head so his lips are at your forehead. He kisses your skin, then your hair, then one of your horns. “I think you did more to them than you realize. You always underestimate your effect on others.”

“Hmph,” you grab a fistful of his shirt and curl in tighter. You can hardly breathe, with how close your knees are to your chest.

“But that’s not what I asked,” his hand rubs your hip, “Do _you_ feel any better?”

Silently, you nod.

He hums a soft tone of pleasure and you relax a little more. You breathe in his scent and allow yourself a hidden smile. You spent the turning of the New Year, in the cold, in the dark, in his arms. If you closed your eyes hard enough, you could almost pretend you hadn’t lost another year of your short, short life. 


End file.
